Starting a Blog: Week 28

For those who don’t know I decided that I wanted to chronicle my experience of starting a blog. The intent is so others can learn what it takes to start a blog, learn from my mistakes throughout the process, and to hopefully provide some humor and enjoyment to your day. I think I will run this “Starting a Blog” series for 52 weeks to provide a well-rounded beginning to starting a blog that you fully intend to turn into a business. (Please know, that affiliate links may be used in this post which means I would earn a little bit of money if you decide to purchase through some of my links. But, I promise to always be honest and to only recommend those things that I personally use and enjoy!)

I’ve decided these weekly updates will be posted on weekends and will consist of 6 categories to help summarize my progress each week.

Blog Improvements

My week in Review

Extra Income Earned

Extra Income Received

Goals I accomplished During the Week

Goal for Next Week

I know this will be very similar to my monthly income reports, but I think having weekly and monthly goals are going to help me stay focused and break my bigger goals down into smaller ones. This should help me in accomplishing my monthly goals, but also allow me to celebrate additional small successes that may happen throughout each week.

I became an affiliate of Ultimate Bundles who offers flash sales a few times each year on a package of incredible items all within a certain category. This year they just ended their Genius Blogger’s Toolkit offer (which I bought).

Email Subscribers:

I am at 57 email subscribers this week, which means I gained 2 new subscribers this week. I had intended to get my landing page up and working since I’ve created my opt-in offer. Hopefully, I can get this up in the next few weeks and my subscribers will grow at a much faster rate.

Traffic Updates:

Here is what my analytics looked like compared to last week:

Last Week

This Week

Sessions

232

341

+109

Pageviews

368

551

+183

Users

215

320

+105

Average Session Duration

00:55

00:53

-00:02

New Sessions

85.34%

88.86%

+3.54%

Pages/Session

1.59

1.62

+0.03

Bounce Rate

83.19%

74.49%

-8.7%

I am very happy I saw an increase again this week. I was getting worried there for awhile. I stayed active on Pinterest during the week, but I still need to work on increasing my engagement.

My Week in Review

Personal Accomplishments:

My husband and I both applied for a part-time seasonal position with Amazon Fresh. If we both were hired for this, we would be bringing in an extra $500 each after taxes so we are really hoping we can make this work to get Pirate’s vet bill paid off entirely and start working towards the next loan.

I was able to purchase theGenius Blogger’s Toolkit this week! This is a financial setback, but I honestly view it as one of the best blogging investments I could have made all year. This toolkit combined 29 ebooks, 4 printables, 33 e-courses, and 17 bonuses from big name successful bloggers for $97. The value of all of these products is $5,089.40 normally which is why this toolkit is only available until 11/1/16. If you are considering purchasing it, I encourage you not to wait!

I checked my Fico score for free this week. I’ve been really worried that my credit score is going to drop since we had to put Pirate’s vet bill on my credit card. But my Fico score actually increased 4 points since last month. I’m not sure about my credit score, but I’m hoping it wasn’t negatively impacted or at least not significantly.

I got my first big commission check this week from my full-time job. I do not include income from my job in my reports, but I’m really excited that we are going to be placing a large chunk of these earnings towards our credit card.

Speaking of my first big commission check, my husband and I agreed I needed to keep a little bit of this extra money to buy some necessities I’ve been needing for awhile, like new black flats for work (my old ones have holes in the bottom since I’ve been wearing them since 2012) and some new sports wear (I’ve also been wearing the same clothes since college). I’m proud I bought these things and hope that my husband and I become better at purchasing the things we need and me specifically not feeling guilty about doing so.

This was the week of freebies! I got free sushi from PF Changs, a free Redbox rental, and had the option to get free coffee at a new coffee shop that just opened but I decided not to. I also got free Colgate whitening toothpaste and a free yogurt from my grocery store this week! I love free stuff and this has inspired me to start a series about where and how to find freebies and what freebies I personally am able to obtain each month.

Productivity Tips & Tricks:

I just didn’t make an effort this week. So if you want to be productive, the first thing you need to do is make sure your mindset is in the right place.

Webinars

I did not attend any webinars this week. I’m taking a break for the next few weeks since I have a lot of other things going on.

Setbacks

My husband and I went over budget again this week. We’re struggling to find a balance, because it’s extremely important to my husband to be able to have spending money and it’s extremely important to me to pay off our debt as quickly as possible. So, we’re constantly working on this, but I think I need to figure out how to allocate more funds for personal spending since it is so important to him.

Extra Income Earned: $73.83

(If you would like to learn how you can start earning extra income, check outmy Resources page) Please note I do not include Google AdSense income here because it isn’t confirmed until a month later.

Extra Income Received: $0.00

Goals I Accomplished This Week

This was not a good week for goals. Honestly, I just didn’t make much of an effort this week so I apologize.

Install a landing page on my blog-Fail. I really want to purchase Thrive, but then the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit became available and I decided to purchase that instead since it’s only available until 11/1/16.

Brand my Pinterest boards-Fail.Actually, I shouldn’t have made this a goal since Pinterest recently updated the view of their boards anyways.

Publish 1 post-Pass! I published a guest post How to Increase Your Savings With Children written by the lovely Francesca at From Pennies to Pounds.

Write 2 posts-Fail.

Goals for Next Week

I am going to be busy helping plan for a friend’s wedding this weekend. So I don’t see myself accomplishing much in terms of the blog this week. My only goal this week is to have 1 post published. I hope to continue working on additional goals if time allows though.

Publish 1 Post

Guys this blogging business is so much fun!!!! I am so committed and I can’t wait to see how my blog continues to grow! I hope that you are feeling inspired to start your own blog or to follow your own dreams! If you’d like to start your own blog, I created a tutorial on how to do so usingBlueHost. Check out my How to Start a Blog Page to start your own blog!

Share below what you have been doing this week to meet your blogging and personal goals!

Thanks Francesca! Amazon Fresh is a subset of Amazon, like an online grocery store. The position I applied for is a warehouse gig. My husband got approved and will start working soon. My application we think was messed up so I have to call them next week to see what’s up. Regarding the commission, it was a substantial amount for me, almost equal to 2 weeks pay from my full-time job so it’ll definitely help.

You are doing so well with this blog, so don’t get too down on yourself!
I also bought an Ultimate Bundle this year, and plan on signing up as an affiliate when my lifestyle blog launches. If you are interested, I’d like to share an affiliate marketing opportunity with you, that just launched on Oct 28th. I’ll be blogging about it soon, on my website that I link on this comment, and so we could cross promote our blogs if you wish. It’s already generated money for me, so I’m pretty excited about it.Lisa recently posted…How to Save for a Vacation or Big Ticket Item

Hey Lisa! For some reason, now I’m unable to reply to your last comment. Sigh I don’t know what’s going on. But! I am definitely going to be checking out the opportunity you are referring to next week when the hustling has calmed down a bit for me 🙂 Thanks for stopping by again and for the encouragement!

Really great work with your blog. It takes so much more time than I anticipated, and not so easy to do with day jobs and all my side hustles.

The Amazon Fresh gig sounds interesting. I’m a big proponent of trying out side hustles. Your side hustle can really add up over time. I signed up for Instacart earlier this year, but ultimately did one grocery delivery and decided it wasn’t for me. Will be interested to see how Amazon Fresh works for you!Financial Panther recently posted…Why I Prefer To Pay Off Debt Aggressively

Thanks for stopping by and for commenting! It is definitely a lot more work than most people expect, ESPECIALLY if you have a full-time job, or kids, or whatever going in life that takes up most of your time. I’ll let you know how the Amazon fresh gig works out! I plan to start a new series soon so hopefully I’ll share some of my insight with you there!